


From Hell and Highwaters

by PipBoi3000



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Body Horror, Fan Work, M/M, spooky scary au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13006872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipBoi3000/pseuds/PipBoi3000
Summary: a collection of drabbles from the Spooky Scary AU





	1. Left In Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one of something I am hoping to be able to add to. Really adore the Spooky Scary AU and hope I'm going to do it some justice. Work inspired by whalehuntingboyfriends 'The Bright Side Of The Dark Side' series.

The phrase ‘breath of life’ comes with many a connotation. It sounds like cool waves and fresh air. It sounds like bright eyes and a sky lit up by miracles. It sounds like there should be a choir and flowers and murmured prayers and family’s embrace.  
But for Gavin, there wasn’t. There was only Ryan and pain.  
Ryan was first, babbling and jumping about, pulling every possible lever and dial. His hands butterflied over Gavin, mimicking and punctuating his words.  
“How do you feel? DO you feel? Can you see? Which side feels neurologically stronger? I can’t believe it WORKED! Gavin! Gavin? Oh…..Oh god….GAVIN?!”  
Then came pain.  
It started in his chest, somewhere deep and wet. Somewhere that shouldn’t have been meddled with... It ripped though him like a charge of electricity, ricocheting through his nerves and sending his heart pounding. He barely had time to take his first breath before it had started. And it was merciless. His body contorted itself into impossible shapes and the pain pulsed into something larger and even less human. He heard a rib break but the pain of it cracking merely joined with that which already surged though his veins. He felt himself opening from the inside, like his system was welcoming something new and dangerous, spreading and propping open channels for it to travel through. And suddenly Ryan was there again, pinning him down, strapping his wrists to cold metal and doing the best he could to stop the boy’s thrashing.  
Gavin screamed and screamed and fuck he could feel blood now, oozing out of his nose and he could feel….He could feel….  
Nothing.  
It was over. As quickly as it began, It was all over. The two of them panted in the silence of the laboratory, Ryan still staring at Gavin.  
It was like diving into a hotel pool in the middle of a tropical storm. The feeling of raw power and tampering had softened its grip and left Gavin suspended. Everything was quiet now, soft and cool and surreal and…Numb. As if in a wild panic, his body had tried to pull him back into death, back into humanity and sensation to feel it all in its full brutality one last time. But it hadn’t, because Ryan had won.  
Ryan had cheated death and now Gavin lay splayed on his slab as something in-between, his lungs pulling in confused breaths that his body didn’t really need. It was the habit of a man who still remembered life as yesterday. Over time he would stop breathing. Habits die.  
It was a long time until either of them said anything. Gavin stared at his body in a mixture of awe and disgust.  
It didn’t matter how precise Ryan had been with his stitches, they still looked raw and ugly. They looked like old sutures on a wound that just wouldn’t heal. Dead. Dead skin. Dead wound. Cold flesh meticulously pulled against yet more cold flesh.  
But it wasn’t the blood or the stitches that broke him. It wasn’t even the crude autopsy scar or the way Ryan was looking at him in a kind of abject horror. It was his fingers.  
“Ryan?”  
“You can talk”  
“I can talk…….Ryan?”  
“Yes?”  
“Who’s fingers are these?”  
Ryan pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat.  
“Well…err…Well, Gavin. We…..That is…I….I’m not entirely sure”  
“Right.”  
“I didn’t kill anyone. He was dead when i dug him…ERRRRR Found him.”  
“Right”  
There was another long pause then, Gavin wiggling the new digits carefully, stretching out the tight pull of the stitches. They moved well. They moved just like HIS fingers used to. But they weren’t his fingers. They weren’t his fingers and the air wasn’t his to breathe and he couldn’t feel the cold metal of the table under him and he was a monster and he was alone and he should have been dead and suddenly Gavin was crying and Ryan was apologising for not finishing the work on his tear ducts.


	2. Electric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Science and magic mingle between undead friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just something I couldn't get out of my head, the idea of finding a haven in the most unexpected way. Sunsets and sparks and bubbles and tenderness. x

Gavin stared at his hands in the lake, the way they warped just below the surface of the water. How the ripples seemed to magnify his stitches to look even more crude and unhealed. The last rays of the summer day beat down at his back and made him glad for the chill of the lake.  
It had been a long and stifling day and Gavin had felt it more so than usual. His skin was tacky with a kind of strange sweat and all his thread felt loose and frayed. He felt…Piecey. It was the familiar feeling of ‘not coping’. He took a deep breath and plunged into the cool water, scrunching his eyes up against the building overload that pressed at his system.  
He let himself stay under for a long time, slowly opening his eyes.   
In the cool depths, their unnatural glow cut though the inky blackness in two blue beams. His heart shone just as brightly, and Gavin floated like a blue paper lantern. He was still for what felt like hours, suspended and pulsing. With each beat his ribs were illuminated, cast up against pale skin in a delicate silhouette. As his heart beat faster in the pressing weight of the water, Small fish and a handful of brave water-fey were drawn in by the enchanted light. For just a moment; a heartbeat, Gavin felt like something magical.  
But as much as as he wanted to stay beneath the ripples, his chest ached and he pulled himself to the surface, spluttering and breathless. The sunlight felt garish after the forgiving depths below him and Gavin scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He looked out across the glassy surface, breathing deeply and trying to steady the pulse of the enchanted heart.  
“You okay there buddy?”

Gavin whirled around in a start, relaxing when he met Michael’s concerned gaze, unnatural as his own.   
“Yeah. Jesus you scared me..”  
Michael smirked and sat down, submerging his bare feet in the shallows.  
“I do that, It’s like… My thing.”  
Gavin gave a weak laugh “Ok well i’ll be inside soon. Well before it gets dark so, yeah, don’t worry about me.”  
Michael nodded but didn’t move, swinging his legs and letting the pond weed wrap around his ankles. Gavin peered at him in the warm light that still clung to the day and couldn’t help but think how human he looked. Unlike Geoff and Jack, Gavin couldn’t feel Michael’s wrongness. To Gavin, the only thing unsettling about Michael was his eyes and he had gotten used to them almost immediately. Gavin wondered if anyone would ever look at him this way. To know he was a monster and simply not to mind. To enjoy his humanity in dusky light but feel no remorse when the day’s brightness revealed the stitches though cold skin. If Dan wouldn’t mind...  
His wistful thoughts didn’t last as Michael slipped off the bank and into the lake, swimming towards Gavin and snorting like a labrador as the water went up his nose.  
“What are you doing you loon, you’re in jeans.”  
“I’m swimmin'! What does it look like!”  
Gavin laughed at the idiot snuffling his way towards him. The laughter didn’t last..  
Michaels eyes flashed and he took a breath, disappearing into the lake, Gavin let out a giggly-squeal and started thrashing away from the spot Michael last was as fast as he could manage. Not fast enough though and a hand grabbed his ankle. He screamed with laughter as Michael tugged at him, eyes bright beneath the water.  
“You creepy little blighter!” Gavin spluttered, somehow managing to take a mouthful of air before letting himself be dragged under.

The water felt odd. It was…Hotter, somehow? And Gavin found himself looking for Michael in a panic. The immortal boy swam towards him and took Gavin’s hands in his own. The water got warmer still.

It was different. Gavin could feel it immediately. Where only minutes ago the lake had been cool and calm and heavy, the water was suddenly charged with an unseen energy. Gavin could feel it under his fingernails and in the back of his teeth, humming with dangerous potential. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t unseen at all. The curse that burdened Michael was ablaze in his eyes, cutting though the darkness to mingle with the enchantment that animated Gavin. Bubbles escaped Michael’s mouth in shock and Gavin had to try not to swallow lake water as he watched the light unfurl. This had never happened before. They had cooled off in the lake all though summer but this..This they would have noticed.  
Magic burned like phosphoresce through Michael’s insignias, setting them all a fiery green like a living manuscript. Gavin’s heart burned a brighter blue than before, leaking light between his ribs and and unhealed lined between his stitches. Here beneath the water magic met science in a blazing, burning living…Something. Something that danced between them like an aching pulse.


End file.
